Steel Arm Davis
American baseball player

Walter C. "Steel Arm" Davis (June 22, 1896 – November 30, 1941) was an American professional baseball outfielder, first baseman, pitcher, player-manager, and manager in the Negro leagues and the Cuban League from 1920 to 1938. He played for the Dayton Marcos, Detroit Stars, Chicago American Giants, Nashville Elite Giants, Gilkerson's Union Giants and Brooklyn Eagles.
During the off-season, Davis often returned to his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, and worked as a porter for many of the local barber shops.
In the later years of his career, Davis worked as a player-manager for the Black Missions baseball team in San Antonio, Texas. The traveling team followed the same traditions of many other barnstorming baseball teams, playing as far away as Canada, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and North Dakota. The team also staged exhibitions with Grover Cleveland Alexander when he was with House of David baseball team during summer 1938.
Known to have a hot temper, Davis was shot and killed by "Red" Merrill after a 1941 barroom brawl in Chicago. Merrill was later captured by police.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Steel Arm Davis” is american baseball player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Steel, Davis and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7605628. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1941, 1920 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Steel Arm Davis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.